On July 4, how do you measure up?

Thousands of re-enactors and history buffs are spending an extended July 4 week in Gettysburg, site of a historic and bloody battle 150 years ago that turned the course of the Civil War. At the Nov. 19, 1863, dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery there, President Abraham Lincoln delivered an unforgettable speech that h...

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Posted Jul. 4, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Posted Jul. 4, 2013 at 12:01 AM

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Thousands of re-enactors and history buffs are spending an extended July 4 week in Gettysburg, site of a historic and bloody battle 150 years ago that turned the course of the Civil War. At the Nov. 19, 1863, dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery there, President Abraham Lincoln delivered an unforgettable speech that has come to be known as the Gettysburg Address. A century and a half later, his concise remarks pointedly state what was at stake: the survival of the nation.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Many wars, countless economic and social crises later, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address remains a powerful reminder of the optimism and achievement of the founders and the strife and sorrow their descendants experienced in the name of freedom. Americans still pursue happiness more than 200 years after the Founders set forth that right, 150 years after the bloody battle that claimed so many lives in rural central Pennsylvania. How do current leaders and citizens measure up to their predecessors?

On this Independence Day holiday, amid the bunting and the banter, the hot dogs and apple pie, the ball game and the beer cooler, pay tribute to the Founders and the soldiers of the Civil War and other conflicts. Strive to live up to the faith of those who risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor for their belief in our inherent rights as human beings and a free government of, by, and for the people.